Point of No Return: Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

A new project to capture urgently on film the testimonies of Iraqi Jews recorded in the book Iraq's Last Jewshas been launched in the US: the Iraqi Jewish Voices Project aims to counter the Eurocentrism of modern Jewish history. Report in the Times of Israel (with thanks: Lily):

NEW YORK — Although Oded Halahmy left Iraq in 1951, Iraq has never left him.
“Every aspect of my life has been influenced by my first home,
the ‘Land of Milk and Honey’ I remember from my childhood. Palm and
pomegranate trees dance in the wind,” said Halahmy, 79. “I can visualize
the narrow alleyways, the houses built of ancient stones with
beautifully sculpted doors, circular windows of exquisitely colored
glass. My memories of Iraq are real and alive, and my attachment to Iraq
is very strong. My Baghdad is the most beautiful place on earth, the
Garden of Eden.”

Halahmy
was 13 when he, his parents, his siblings as well as hundreds of other
relatives left for Israel. Now, as his generation ages, first-person
stories like Halahmy’s are slipping into the shadows of history.

“These are the very last years to capture firsthand accounts of
Jewish life in Iraq. There will be no witnesses left and so there is an
urgency to get the stories. It’s a last grasp. Mizrahi Jews account for
half the world’s Jewry, yet their stories remain virtually untold,” said
Tamar Morad, a writer and editor living in Israel.
That’s where The Iraqi Jewish Voices Project, IJVP, comes in. Using
black and white portraits, interviews, and scanned historical documents,
the multi-media project records the stories of the last Jews of Iraq
and what it was like for them to immigrate to Israel, France, the United
States and beyond.

Oded Halahmy for the Iraqi Jewish Voices Project. (Liam Sharp)

The project aims to shift the meta-narrative of world Jewry in the
20th Century, which has almost always revolved around the history of
European Jewry. The bold initiative might just be the thread that
stitches the Jews of the Mideast’s past to the future.

Morad, who grew up in Boston, is of Ashkenazi descent. Her husband’s
family came from Iraq. In no time she realized the more she asked her
father-in-law, as well as her husband’s 105-year-old grandfather, about
what life was like in Iraq before they left, the more she wanted to
know.

She found others wanted to share their stories as well. “You see the
eagerness of people to tell their stories. It’s the first time some of
them have told their stories in full,” Morad said. “It’s time the world
should know it. To progress we need to be educated about the past.”

Morad co-manages the project with Henry Green, executive director of
the NGO Sephardi Voices, and professor of Judaic and Religious Studies
at the University of Miami.

The Iraqi Jewish Voices Project comes under the auspices of the
nonprofit Sephardi Voices (SV), which aims to collect thousands of
interviews of Jews who lived in Arab and Muslim lands. It wants to do
for the Jews of Arab lands what the Shoah Foundation did for Holocaust
survivors in collecting and preserving their testimony about life
before, during and after World War II, Green said.

Monday, September 25, 2017

Kurds wave an Israeli flag at a pro-independence demonstration in Erbil (Photo: Ivor Pricket, New York Times)Today, Iraqi Kurds vote in a non-binding referendum on whether the region should declare independence from Iraq. Saladin, who employed Maimonides as his physician, would have been proud, declares David Halbfinger in Haaretz. To-date, Israel is the only state to have come out in support of independence, in recognition of Kurdish help to evacuate Jews from Iraq and a military alliance that goes back to the 1960s. (With thanks: Lily)

In the modern era, Kurdish Jews departed en masse for Israel when the Jewish state was created in 1948, leaving Kurdish civil society so bereft that some recall its leaders still lamenting the Jewish exodus decades later.

Ties between the two have only grown warmer and more vital since the 1960s, as Israel and the Kurds — both minorities in an inhospitable region and ever in need of international allies — have repeatedly come to each other’s aid. The Kurds have long patterned their lobbying efforts in Washington on those of Israel’s supporters.

And while Kurdish leaders have not publicly embraced Israel in the run-up to the referendum, for fear of antagonizing the Arab world, the Israeli flag can routinely be seen at Kurdish rallies in Erbil and across Europe.

The Kurds in turn have friends and supporters all across Israel, including some 200,000 Kurdish Jews. But 83-year-old Tzuri Sagi, a retired brigadier general, has more reason than most Israelis to root for Kurdish independence.
“I became a patriotic Kurd,” says Mr. Sagi, now 83 and a retired brigadier general, who worked as an Israeli military adviser to Kurdish fighters.

In the winter of 1966, Mr. Sagi’s commanders sent him on a secret mission, via Israel’s then-ally, Iran, to aid Mullah Mustafa Barzani and his pesh merga rebels in Iraqi Kurdistan. Six Iraqi army brigades were standing by to overwhelm the Kurds when the snow melted. Mr. Sagi, a lieutenant colonel, drew up defenses for Barzani’s lightly armed fighters. When those collapsed, Mr. Sagi advised the Kurds to allow the best of the Iraqi brigades to break out — right into an ambush.

The 5,000-man Iraqi brigade was wiped out, and the battle, on Mount Handrin, became a landmark in Kurdish history. Mr. Sagi recalls Iraqi officers driving up in two jeeps waving white flags.

“They said to the Kurds, ‘What do you want?’” he recalled.

Over the years, Israeli doctors set up a field hospital for the Kurds, its soldiers trained the pesh merga fighters and the Mossad helped arm them.

After Israel’s defeat of its Arab neighbors in 1967 and the Baathist coup in Iraq a year later, Iraq became inhospitable to its dwindling Jewish population. Then it was the Barzanis’ turn to help.

After nine Jews were hanged in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square in 1969, Iraqi Jews were desperate to flee. The Kurds helped some 1,000 of them escape, over land to Iran and then by plane to Israel.

“They were going on donkeys, through the mountains,” said Ofra Bengio, a pre-eminent historian of the Kurds and professor emerita at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center.

One of the escapees was Zamir Shemtov, 63, now a dentist in Herzliya, who was a teenager in 1970 when his parents and extended family made their first attempt to flee Iraq. Arrested and locked up for a month, they tried again, but this time they were blackmailed, robbed, caught by the army and sent back to Baghdad, where his father was brutally interrogated, Mr. Shemtov said. Released two months later, they tried to get out a third time. This time, a Kurdish taxi driver ushered them to a safe meeting point where a young uniformed Kurdish fighter loaded them in his jeep and ferried them across the border into Iran.

Mr. Shemtov said that near the end of the drive, his father offered the fighter his gold watch in gratitude.

“The young man answered, ‘I am Masoud Barzani, son of Mullah Barzani, and if Mullah would hear that I took a watch, he would hang me!’” Mr. Shemtov recalled. “‘Instead, all I ask as thanks is that you remember us well in the future.’”

Saturday, September 23, 2017

Iraqi Jews in Israel and abroad are mourning the death, on the second day of the Jewish New Year, of Professor Shmuel Moreh, 85, emeritus professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Lyn Julius writes in The Times of Israel:

Born Sami Muallem in 1932 in Baghdad's upmarket district of Bataween, Professor Moreh was a well-respected academic (as chairman of the Association of Academics from Iraq in Israel, he presided over the publication of countless books), who excelled in his command of the Arabic language.

Immigrating to Israel with his family in 1951, he received his B.A. and M.A. from The Hebrew University in Arabic literature and Islamic Studies and his Ph.D. in modern Arabic poetry (SOAS,London University) in 1965. He was a poet and a prolific author of over 20 publications in English, Hebrew and Arabic. His memoirs were serialised in the online Arabic medium Elaph in 2009 -10 and awakened huge interest among Iraqis in their lost Jewish community. The series was later published in Arabic as Baghdad Mon Amour.

At the same time as he served as a bridge between Israelis and Arabs, Professor Moreh made sure not to sugarcoat the persecutions suffered by Iraq's Jews. Moreh was a survivor of the Farhudpogrom, in which at least 179 Jews were killed, and wrote vividly of his experiences. In 2010 he published in English, with Zvi Yehuda, a ground-breaking collection of essays about the Farhud, and was in the forefront of the campaign to have the pogrom recognised as a Holocaust event.

Among his lesser-known talents was boxing, a skill he refined at his primary school when confronted with taunting and bullying from the other boys. The tensions in the lead-up to the Farhud led him, aged eight, into fights with Faisal, the son of the pro-Nazi prime minister of Iraq, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani. When the boy threatened to knock his eye out with a stick, Shmuel punched Faisal and the boy went running to their Christian headmistress.

He was a proud Israeli, and yet confessed to not feeling entirely at home until he received the Israel Prize for Middle Eastern Studies in 1999.

Friday, September 22, 2017

Apologies for starting off the new Jewish year with this dose of poison from Al-Jazeera. The writer Susan Abulhawa has a track record for being one of the most virulent purveyors of anti-Israel extremism. The article features a number of textbook tropes: Israel is a 'colonial settler' enterprise. It needed Jews from Arab countries to populate the state (insert here the familiar 'Zionists bombed Iraq' allegation), but preserved an orientalist contempt for their inferior culture (insert here cherry-picked quote by Zionist leader, in this case Jabotinsky). The article condemns Israel for collapsing these cartoonish keffiyeh-wearing, hummus-munching Jews into a single invented 'Mizrahi' identity, but this is exactly what Abulhawa does when she calls them 'Arab Jews'. (Yet she contradicts herself by claiming there were differences between Tunisian, Moroccan and other Jews. Persian Jews, she claims, spoke Arabic!) Ashkenazi Zionists are uniquely evil because they kidnap Mizrahi babies (insert obligatory link to article by Jonathan Cook). (With thanks: Hadar)

Yemenite Jews reading the Bible

Although it was a project conceived by Europeans and for European Jews, they lacked sufficient numbers to build a population large enough to conquer the indigenous Palestinian population. Thus, recruitment of Jews from the surrounding Arab world was a necessary inconvenience. They did so through propaganda and by creating false flag terror incidents (bombing of synagogues or Jewish centres) in order provoke an exodus of Arab Jews.

A prime example of this happened in Iraq where the oldest Jewish community in the world had lived for millennia as contributing members of Iraqi society, and who prospered, contributed to the arts and the economy, and participated in government.
But these Jews were not embraced as brethren by European Zionists. Zionism was decidedly colonial, and that meant that Jews of the Arab world were seen as incomplete, barbaric, dirty, uncivilised. Za'ev Jabotinsky, one of the forefathers of Zionism said, "We Jews have nothing in common with what is called the Orient, thank God. To the extent that our uneducated masses [Arab Jews] have ancient spiritual traditions and laws that call the Orient, they must be weaned away from them, and this is in fact what we are doing in every decent school, what life itself is doing with great success. We are going in Palestine, first for our national convenience, [second] to sweep out thoroughly all traces of Oriental soul.

Before Israel, Jews of Iraq identified as Iraqi, as Egyptian, and of Palestine as Palestinian. They spoke Arabic, ate the same foods as their Christian and Muslim compatriots, celebrated and partook in the same national events and traditions, lived by the same social protocols, and moved through their respective cultures as other natives did. And despite the similarities of their cultures, Tunisians were distinct from Egyptians, who were both distinct from Iraqis, who were distinct from Moroccans, etc. But Israel collapsed them all under a single identity, which was to be distinguished only from Ashkenazis, European Jews, who were higher up on the social order, and, of course, from non-Jewish Palestinians and Arabs, who were to be despised. The level of their resulting self-hate can be measured in the heightened cruelty they practise against Palestinians.

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Wishing all readers of Point of No Return Shana tova - Tisku leshanim rabot!

Tonight is the start of the two-day holiday celebrating Rosh Hashana - the Jewish New Year. At the beginning of the meal, Sephardim and Mizrahim have a special custom of reciting the Yehi Ratzones. Ty Alhadeff on the UW Stroum Jewish Studies site explains (with thanks: Michelle):

The Jewish people celebrate Rosh Hashana (pronounced Rosh Ashana among
Sepharadim) every year starting the evening of the first day of the
Hebrew month of Tishri. The Jewish New Year is celebrated in synagogues
by hearing the shofar (ram’s horn) blasts and at home with a festive
meal featuring symbolic foods, like apples dipped in honey for a sweet
new year.

At the beginning of the holiday dinner, Sephardic Jews from the lands
of the former Ottoman Empire have a special custom called the yehi ratzones,
a series of symbolic appetizers including not only apples, but also
dates, leeks, spinach, squash, black-eyed peas, and cheek meat of a cow
or a fish head (the foods may differ between communities and be prepared
in any number of ways). The symbolic foods represent, based on word
play with Aramaic or Hebrew, a hope for the coming year, yehi ratzon
meaning “may it be[God’s] will.”

For instance, dates symbolize the hope for the end
of enmity against the Jews, as the Aramaic word for “date” is similar to
a Hebrew word for “end.” The fish head or cheek meat symbolizes our
hope that we may be the head, and not the tail. (See the order of the yehi ratzones in English, Hebrew and Ladino [in Latin script] according to the Sephardic customs as practiced in Seattle in Isaac Azose’sMahzor Tefilah Le-David Le-Rosh Ashana.)

It is not entirely clear where the custom of the yehi ratzones originates, but food symbolism dates back to Talmudic times. In addition to the yehi ratzones,
instead of dipping their bread in salt as is customary throughout the
year, Jews dip their bread in honey or sugar on Rosh Ashana. In Rhodes,
that sugar was kept throughout the year for various folk remedies. In
her memoir I Remember Rhodes, Rebecca Amato Levy relates another interesting custom followed by this community in which they avoided wearing anything new on their feet including shoes, stockings, and slippers on Rosh Ashana.

Sepharadim greet each other with the Ladino expression Anyada Buena, Dulse i Alegre (“May you have a good, sweet and happy New Year”) or a Hebrew greeting, Tizku leshanim rabot(“May you merit many years”), to which one answers, Tizkeh vetihyeh ve-ta’arich yamim (“May you merit and live and increase your days”).

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

We are now seeing the concrete dividends, as reported in the Jerusalem Post, of Israel's rapprochement with the pro-US Gulf states and Saudi Arabia in the face of the common Iranian nuclear threat: it is groundbreaking that Bahrain's king Hamad has denounced the Arab boycott and declared that Bahrainis are free to visit Israel. However, the king may be out of synch with his Shi'a population, and a new Museum of Tolerance may be not enough to dispel the very real hostility that some might feel towards Jews. (With thanks: Lily)

King Hamad bin Isa al KhalifaLOS ANGELES – Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa
has denounced the Arab boycott of Israel and said his subjects are free
to visit the Jewish state. The statement by the head of the Persian
Gulf country, which does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, was
revealed at a multi-national event last week in Los Angeles, hosted by
the city's Simon Wiesenthal Center.

At the event, Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, who head the
Wiesenthal Center, revealed the king's pronouncements made to them
during their visit to Manama, Bahrain's capital city, in early 2017.

A walk through the city, at that time was an eye-opener, Cooper said.
There was a church, with a huge cross, next to a Hindu temple, and 90
meters on an impressive mosque. Even a small synagogue, the only one in
the Persian Gulf region, still stands in an older part of the city.

When Hier and Cooper met with King Hamad, they also discussed the ruler’s plan to establish a Museum of Religious Tolerance in the capital city by the end of this year.

At the Los Angeles event last week, delegations of Buddhists in saffron
robes, Sikhs in turbans, and Muslims with keffiyehs and hijabs [Muslim
head-covers for men and veils for women], mingled with Jews with kippot
[skullcaps] and Christians in business suits.

In May 2013, American forces in Baghdad
discovered an archive of thousands of photos, documents and books
pertaining to Iraqi Jewry in a basement of the Iraqi security services'
building. The archive comprised dozens of boxes, most of which had
become mildewed after getting wet in the waterlogged basement. The
collection included many rare books and papers, including 500-year-old
volumes of Torah commentary. To save the archive, the U.S. military
secured the permission of the Iraqi government to send the boxes to the
National Archives in Washington, where, bit by bit, workers managed to
restore most of the documents.

The oldest item in the collection is this Venice Bible from 1568

Before removing the documents, the American
government agreed to the Iraqis' stipulation that the documents be
returned once they were restored.

As part of the restoration process, the
National Archives digitized the collection. Congressional
representatives and the American administration faced heavy pressure,
mainly from Jewish groups, not to return the archive to Iraq, but last
week, a final decision was taken to hand the collection back to Iraq about a year from now.

This decision is both absurd and pathetic,
like giving a thief back what he stole. The question being asked in
Jewish circles is whether the U.S. is trying to make up for invading
Iraq and its failure to find chemical weapons there. Why should the U.S.
return the collection to a place that is no longer home to Jews?
Returning the archive to the Iraqis is like returning the belongings of
European Jews to the Nazis; it's stolen Jewish property.

Even though the Jews of Iraq lived in
Babylon before the advent of Islam and before the Prophet Muhammad came
along, there are no Jews there today. More than 150,000 Iraqi Jews left
the country over the course of the 20th century, some motivated by
Zionism, and others by fear for their lives. Iraq didn't know how to
protect its Jews, and as early as 1941, hundreds of Iraqis were
slaughtering Jews in the Farhud (pogrom).

When Israel was founded in 1948, and hatred
toward Jews continued to mount, the Iraqi government permanently
revoked the citizenships of Jews and expelled them from the country,
freezing their bank accounts and confiscating their property, which
today is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Iraqis murdered Jews and
inherited their property. There are no other words that can describe
this absurdity and this crime – "Have you killed and also taken
possession?" (1 Kings 21:19)

Today, Iraq is a failed nation and will
soon be divided into three countries: a Kurdish state, a Sunni state and
a Shiite state. We all witnessed the Islamic State group destroying
Iraq's antiquities, demolishing museums and wrecking churches,
synagogues and even the graves of holy figures. The cowardly Iraqi army
didn't dare take on the 1,500 Islamic State fighters, opting to give in
and surrender its weapons. If the heroic Peshmerga fighters hadn't
stepped in, Islamic State would have conquered all of Iraq.

Therefore, it is upon the Israeli
government to pressure the Trump administration to ensure that the
archive of Iraqi Jewry isn't returned to Iraq. It isn't a question of
heritage; it's a question of historic justice.

The only surviving crew member of Alaska Airlines, whose mission was to bring 50,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel between 1949 and 1950, was honoured last week. Elgen Long, 91, received two awards at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. The Times of Israel reports (with thanks: Imre):

Retd Capt Elgen Long with Shahar Azani of StandwithUs. Azani's grandparents and father were Yemenite Jews airlifted to Israel by Alaska Airlines

By January 1948 he was assigned to fly across the northern Pacific.
Just a few months later he and his crew received a cablegram from
Alaskan Airlines president James Wooten.

“We were told to go to Aden but to leave the stewardesses behind,” Long said.
Soon after arriving in Aden they learned their mission: airlift a
couple of thousand refugees to Israel. In the years leading up to and
immediately following the UN Declaration establishing the State of
Israel, life for Yemenite Jews had deteriorated.

“‘They’re sick and we don’t have the people to take care of them.
They are hungry, but we don’t have food to feed them. They need clothes,
but we have none to give them. We can’t protect them; we don’t have the
people to protect them. They are fair game for the local Arabs. The
pogrom had been going on; over 80 have been killed already. Get them out
of here as quickly as you can,’” Long recalled being told.

Yemenite family airlifted to Israel on Operation Wings of Eagles

Long’s plane didn’t have enough seats for everyone on board. And so
at the mechanic’s suggestion they removed all the seats and made space
for 150 people.

“No one was thinking about seat belts. We were just thinking about
getting everyone out, as many as we could at a time,” Long said.
It was one thing to fly through anti-aircraft fire, through chaff, or
over Japanese controlled territory. But none of that prepared him for
what he saw on the tarmac in Aden.

“They had no luggage. Most of them didn’t even have shoes. They
walked from wherever they lived to get there [the base]. They walked
barefoot through the desert to get here. Some came from Sana’a, [235]
miles away,” Long said.
They stood before the plane. Their hesitation and trepidation palpable.

“Many had never seen a plane before. Then their rabbi told them:
‘This is your eagle that is going to take you on your Aliyah,’” Long
said, referring to the a the passage from Exodus 19:4 “I bear you on
eagles’ wings and brought you unto myself.”

There were no stairs leading into the plane. Only a ladder. And so
they climbed aboard one by one; passing up babies and small children.

And off they went, flying a carefully plotted course up the middle of
the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aqaba, over Eilat, then Beersheba and finally
to Tel Aviv. No flight plan was filed. Only the British, Americans and
Israelis knew where they came from and where they were going.

For next two years, Long, together with Captains Sam Silver and
Warren Metzger, and Chief Pilot Robert McGuire, Jr., helped fulfill an
oft cited Biblical prophecy that Yemenite Jews would one day return to
their homeland — Israel — “on the wings of eagles.”

The work days were 16 to 20 hours long. After unloading passengers in
Tel Aviv the crew usually flew on to Cyprus to spend the night. Alaska
Airlines couldn’t keep the planes on the ground in Israel because of
bombing raids by the neighboring Arab countries.

Sunday, September 17, 2017

The exodus of Jews from Egypt in 1956 and the celebration of their food and culture was the topic of a conference held in Parma, Italy last week. It was attended by many interested non-Jews.

The conference took place at the beautiful 'Casa della
Musica' in Parma, Italy, on 10 September, in the framework of "The European
Day of Jewish Culture", with its principal theme the 'Expulsion of
Jews from Egypt'.

It began with a long and
interesting lecture about the fate and tragedy of Jews under Nasser 's regime by Professoressa Marcella Emiliani, writer and historian specialising in Middle East themes.

But the 'main course' served up was
Carolina Delburgo's presentation of her book 'Come ladri nella Notte -
la Cacciata dell'Egitto' (Like thieves in the night - the Expulsion
from Egypt).

As Prof. Emiliani said, Delburgo wrote
her book based on the memories of an 11- year-old child, without any
trace of politics - just the truth about the expulsion as she went
through it, when Egyptian officers came to her house on that day, November 28th 1956. As her father was taken away to be detained in prison, the Egyptian Authorities came to her mother ordering her to pack just one bag and twenty pounds for each one of them,
declaring that the bus would come at midnight to take them to Alexandria to board a ship out of Egypt.

A report in a local paper

She recalled being on a bus full only of
women and children, the Egyptian officers confiscating all gold
jewellery including wedding rings. All were pushed into the Achyleos, full of expelled Jews with their families, where she
found her father, in handcuffs until the boat had left Egyptian waters.

Carolina
Delburgo recalled the refugee camp at Brindisi in Italy - she
revisited it 50 years later - the desarray of her parents, her aunt, her
cousin and brother.

The large
audience was captivated and wanted to hear more, but had then to go to another
hall to taste the Jewish delicacies offered by the community of Parma.

Attending
this important conference on the mass expulsion in
November 1956 of Jews from Egypt were Victor Maggiar, president of the Jewish community of Italy, who came especially from Rome and Levana Zamir, president of the Jews
from Egypt in Israel, also representing the Coalition of Organisations of
Jews from Arab Countries. From Milan came Marlyse Mosseri-Saporta, who was expelled from Cairo beginning in 1957. There were some 300 residents from Parma - many of
them interested non-Jews - and many others.

This academic and instructive conference
ended with a brilliant recital by Maestro Joshua Moretti, accompanied by videoclips. The concert music was especially composed for the occasion.

Saturday, September 16, 2017

During a “From Balfour to Brexit” conference on the future of
UK-Israel relations this week, David Dangoor officially opened the Sir
Naim Dangoor Centre for UK-Israel Relations at Mishkenot Hashaananim,
Israel, in honour of his late father, a refugee from Iraq who settled in Britain. The Jewish Chronicle reports:

“Mishkenot Hashaananim was
set up by Sir Moses Montefiore — again, an example of the Britain-Israel
connection”, Mr Dangoor pointed out. “I’m conscious of the fact that it
was here [in the UK] where a lot of BDS activities started. There are
many streams in the UK — some of them not fully understanding Israel,
and therefore being quite inimical to Israel.

“So I feel we’re
well placed to try and do our little bit towards remedying that, and
also to help Britain strengthen its current friendships outside the EU.
Clearly we all know Brexit is going to change things, and the message
from Theresa May and the government very much is ‘we need to strengthen
our good relations, especially with those countries which have excellent
business technology and science’ — and Israel is a top candidate in
that.

“So I felt, to put my father there… and to bring Israel into
an even stronger positive light in the UK and to help Britain
strengthen its ties with Israel, were all great activities that we were
delighted to be associated with.”

Mr Dangoor intends to set up a healthcare tech-hub, similar to the business hub which already exists between the two countries.

“The
wonderful NHS is, as a lot of areas of medicine are, a very
conservative body. What Israel has — partly because it’s a younger
nation — is a wonderful health care service, which in many fields
matches or exceeds what we get here in the UK,” he said.

“And I
think therefore that we need to encourage practitioners in Israel to
offer to the NHS some of the benefits they can. It’s a little known fact
that over 20 per cent of the medicines that the NHS uses come from
Teva, an Israeli company, and it’s rising, heading towards 25 per cent.

“For
six years now we have sponsored the UK-Israel cardiology seminar, which
takes place intermittently once in the UK, once in Israel — and a lot
of good has come out of that. We feel this healthcare hub would take the
potential to a new level, and of course, the NHS is such a huge
organisation, that the potential for business benefit for Israel is
vast.”

Friday, September 15, 2017

The eviction last week of the Arab Shamasneh family from a house in
Jerusalem’s Shimon Hatzaddik quarter has raised a global chorus of
disapproval from media, diplomats and human rights activists. Israelis
are being painted as heartless creatures who throw elderly Arabs out on
the street. But are we being told the full facts? Lyn Julius writes in The Jewish Chronicle:

Members off the Shamasneh family being forcibly evicted

The Jewish
Hubara family owned the house but were expelled early in the 1948 War
of Independence. The properties were impounded by the Jordanian
Custodian for Absentee Property who rented them to local Arabs.

When
the Israelis recaptured and annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, it became
possible for the former Jewish owners to apply for compensation or
restitution. Legal cases have dragged on for years, however, because the
Israeli courts have protected the Arab tenants’ rights. Only if the
residents do not pay rent has judgment gone against them. The courts
have been known not to enforce an eviction order against Arab squatters
with no other home to go to.

Few
media mention the expulsion of 1948. The Jewish claimants, they say,
want to "Judaise" Jerusalem – "to throw out the Arabs and expand Jewish
settlement". Fewer still have reported that the Shamasnehs did not pay
rent.

Ten years ago, the Hubaras sold their property rights on to Aryeh King of the Israel Land Fund. King told Haaretz
that the Arab family ceased paying rent five years ago. “I don’t trust
them anymore because they have a debt of 180,000 shekels for rent, and
damage of another 160,000 shekels...They did everything possible so [the
eviction] would happen.”

He added: “The elderly parents have no
reason whatsoever to remain in the street because their daughter lives
right next door, and there is evidence they will receive housing aid
from the European Union.”

Reports also allege a double standard,
that the law allows Jews to reclaim their property but no such law
exists for Palestinians. While restitution is rare, anyone can claim
compensation for property lost within the Green Line.

In 1993, 14,692 Arabs claimed compensation under Israel’s Absentee Property Law. In 2016 Gulf News Palestine
reported on a campaign to prevent increasing numbers of landowners from
accepting compensation for property inside the Green Line because it
jeopardised the Palestinian "Right of Return".

The real double
standard is that the media never find dispossessed Jews worthy of
coverage. No Israelis driven from their homes can initiate court
proceedings in Arab lands, let alone obtain compensation.

Thursday, September 14, 2017

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick says that the return of the Iraqi-Jewish archive to Iraq is proof of the US State department's obsession with Israel. (You too can do something constructive to stop the archive being returned: sign the petition now!)

Talmud from 1793 discussing the laws of Yom Kippur, found in the archive

As for the current Iraqi government that the State Department wishes to
support by implementing its 2014 agreement, it is an Iranian satrapy.
Its leadership and military receive operational orders from Iran.

The
Iraqi Jewish archive was not created by the Iraqi government. It is
comprised of property looted from persecuted and fleeing Jews. In light
of this, it ought to be clear to the State Department that the Iraqi
government’s claim to ownership is no stronger than the German
government’s claim to ownership of looted Jewish property seized by the
Nazis would be.

On the other hand, members of
the former Jewish community and their descendants have an
incontrovertible claim to them. And they have made this claim,
repeatedly.

To no avail. As far as the State
Department is concerned, they have no claim to sacred books and
documents illegally seized from them.

When
asked how the US could guarantee that the archive would be properly
cared for in Iraq, all State Department spokesman Pablo Rodriguez said
was, “When the IJA [Iraqi Jewish archive] is returned, the State
Department will urge the Iraqi government to take the proper steps
necessary to preserve the archive, and make it available to members of
the public to enjoy.”

It is hard not to be taken aback by the callousness of Rodriguez’s statement.

Again,
the “members of the public” who wish to “enjoy” the archive are not
living in Iraq. They are not living in Iraq because they were forced to
run for their lives – after surrendering their communal archives to
their persecutors. And still today, as Jews, they will be unable to
visit the archives in Iraq without risking their lives because today, at
a minimum, the Iraqi regime kowtows to forces that openly seek the
annihilation of the Jewish People.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

The attack last week on a Jewish family just outside Paris is the latest of a series of anti-semitic incidents. (In the case of Sarah Halimi, the Jewess tortured and thrown out of the window to her death, the psychiatrist's report downplays the anti-Jewish aspect of the crime, blaming the fact that her killer took a massive dose of cannabis.) The Times of Israel reports:

According to the BNVCA report, the unidentified attackers told their victims, “You are Jewish, you have money.”
The assailants, black men in their 20s or 30s, according to the victims’ description, took jewelry, cash and credit cards.
The Pintos were taken to hospital for treatment. They suffered some minor injuries but were deeply traumatized, the report said.
The BNVCA called the attack “manifestly anti-Semitic” and
“premeditated,” and said the family was “threatened with death” and
“violently beaten.”

In a statement on
Sunday, CRIF, the umbrella body of French Jewish organizations, said it
“powerfully condemns the very violent and anti-Semitic aggression.”

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Eyal Sagui Bisawe, a lecturer on the Egyptian film industry and maker of 'Arabic movie', has a bone to pick with the new schools curriculum in Israel. It now includes a module called 'The expulsion of Egyptian Jewry'. His article in Haaretz is confused and confusing, but Bisawe's objections seem to boil down to the following: Persecution should not define us. The Jews made contributions in so many fields worthy of note. Only a minority of Jews were actually expelled. They were not the only minority forced out. We should not use the terminology of others: Jews from Europe or Palestinians. See my comment below. (With thanks: Lily, Tom)

The Jewish-owned Cicurel department store was burnt by rioters in 1952.

I was recently pleased to learn that the Education Ministry has
decided, as part of efforts to redress a historical injustice, to
inaugurate a new curriculum to include 12 “essential concepts” on Jewish
communities from the Islamic world and further afield.

The concepts include general (even too general) attention to lots of
things, for example: Persian and Ethiopian Jewry, leading figures
including the late Sephardi Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the 17th century
Yemenite poet Rabbi Shalom Shabazi, underground Zionist activity in
Iraq, disasters including the forced conversion of Persian Jews in the
city of Mashhad, the 19th-century Damascus blood libel, the death of
North African Jews in the Holocaust and the expulsion of Egyptian Jewry.

If the approach can be summed up, it’s that the Jews in Muslim
countries tended to matters in their own communities, wrote in Hebrew or
Judeo-Arabic, engaged in Zionist activity – and in their spare time
were persecuted. There’s no attention to Jewish involvement in national
or communist politics, literature in the local language or European
languages, the establishment of the Iraqi broadcast-authority orchestra,
the involvement of Jews in the Egyptian film industry, or the Jewish
involvement in the war in Algeria. Not that all these had to be the
basis for an “essential concept,” but at least one of them could have
been highlighted.
Actually, you could conclude from the list of 12 concepts that the
only contact that Mizrahi Jews – Jews from the Middle East – had with
their local surroundings came in the form of the next pogrom. The theme
is clear. After all, there’s nothing like some good trauma to bring us
all together around our memory of national tragedy, where we can put the
head of a Persian Jew on the shoulders of a Polish Jew and the head of a
German Jew on
n the shoulders of an Iraqi Jew, wailing together that the
shtetl is burning.

But is it possible in the same context to include “the expulsion of
Egyptian Jewry”? After all, not only did this not influence the lives of
Jews outside Egypt. It’s doubtful it can be viewed as an event that
affected the whole of the Egyptian Jewish community. In addition, like
the 1952 Cairo riots known as the Cairo fire, it’s difficult to state
that it was a clearly anti-Jewish event.

I can already sense the ire of Egyptian Jews as I type these lines.
After all, how is it that “one of our own” would deny the tragedy of the
expulsion and play down the trauma of so many people? Even in Egypt
they’re acknowledging the expulsion, expressing remorse and even making
documentaries and writing investigative pieces on the subject.

So in my defense, let me make things clear. Jews were indeed expelled
from Egypt. As far back as May 1948, when Israel declared its
independence, Jews suspected of Zionist or communist activity were put
in detention camps. Some of the detainees managed to gain their freedom
in the first few months, but those who remained in custody until July
1949 were expelled.

In 1956, following the Sinai Campaign, or at it’s known in Egypt, the
Tripartite Aggression (of Israel, Britain and France), the Egyptian
police resumed detention without trial of hundreds of the heads of
Jewish families, often without relatives knowing anything about the fate
of those taken away. The bank accounts of many were confiscated, their
businesses nationalized, their homes sealed, and many were forced to
sign declarations that they had voluntarily forfeited their property.
Many were also sent directly from transit camps to ships that took them
out of Egypt, never to return. Their passports were stamped “departure
without possible return.”

In addition, many of those who weren’t expelled were compelled in
other ways to leave, whether out of fear or because they wanted to be
with their relatives abroad, because they realized that Jews had no
future in Egypt, or because they were Zionists. For many Egyptian Jews,
it was impossible to remain even if they weren’t expelled. (...)

But when it comes to the expulsion of Egyptian Jewry, I haven’t found
even a single basic study, though I admit that, since I’m not a
historian, it’s entirely possible I’ve missed one. And in all the
studies I’m aware of about Egyptian Jewry, the expulsion doesn’t even
get an entire chapter.

The expulsion is noted in passing at the end of a book by Gudrun
Krämer on the Jewish community in Egypt between 1914 and 1952, as a
topic beyond the study’s purview. In the book “The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry,” Joel Beinin devotes just a few paragraphs to the topic, as do books by Shimon Shamir, Ruth Kimchi, Najat Abdulhaq and others.

In “The Jews of Egypt, 1920-1970,”
the historian Michael Laskier writes that from November 1956 to 1958,
between 23,000 and 25,000 Jews left the country. Laskier doesn’t claim
that all of them were expelled, but let’s take a worst-case scenario.
Even if 25,000 were expelled, of the 60,000 Jews that were in Egypt
after the first wave of aliyah following the establishment of Israel,
that would leave 35,000 not expelled. If it was clear policy to expel
Jews, why not expel them all?

In a new Hebrew-language book “The Five Long Minutes: The Jews of
Egypt, 1967-1970, the Arrests and Uprooting,” Cairo-born Ovadia
Yerushalmi writes about the conditions in which Egypt’s Jews lived
during the Six-Day War and the detention without trial of Jewish males,
including himself.
“After the Sinai campaign the Egyptian government arrested several
hundred Jews and imprisoned them in detention camps without trial and
for no reason,” he writes. “Most of the Jews lost their livelihood. Many
of them were expelled for being British or French citizens, and others
had to leave due to the confiscation of their property. After the Sinai
Campaign, the feeling also changed among the young people who had to
remain in Egypt. They too understood that their future was outside
Egypt, and they planned to leave at a suitable time for them.”

There is so much in this paragraph. First, we learn from the book’s
title that even in the late ‘60s, there was still a Jewish community in
Egypt – tiny, but not expelled. Second, we learn that many of the Jews
arrested in 1956 were expelled, but not all of them or even a majority.
Third, there were Jews with British or French citizenship. Fourth, there
were young people who not only weren’t expelled but had to stay. They
would leave when it suited them.

Many Jews of Egyptian origin won’t be pleased to read this, to put it
mildly. Over the years, all they wanted was recognition of the trauma
of expulsion. Like me, they've sought their personal story in the
collective narrative, but as I see it, they’ve erred in describing their
experience using terminology from others’ experience.

So, for example, they’ve referred to the detention camps as
concentration camps and have spoken of their experiences as “the Nakba
of Jews from Arab countries,” using the Arabic word that refers to the
events during Israel’s War of Independence when Palestinians fled or
were expelled from the country.
In a 1990 book about the Egyptian Jewish community, there’s even an
incident called the Night of the Cinemas; it refers to the day Israel
declared independence, May 14, 1948. The book describes the killing of
hundreds of young Egyptian Jews on that day, but such an event never
took place.

“Last night was a second Kristallnacht, this time not in Berlin but
in the heart of serene Cairo!” the story’s female protagonist tells a
Holocaust survivor. After all, what’s the story of Jews from Arab
countries if it can’t be compared to the catastrophe of our brothers in
Europe?

With all the cynicism in what I’m saying, there’s nothing in the
above description that justifies the arrests and act of expulsion, and I
certainly don’t play down the trauma that expellees from Egypt
underwent. In my own family, some were expelled and much of their
property was nationalized. But I’d like to hear these accounts in the
Egyptian Jews’ own words, without the terminology used by Jews from
Europe, or by Palestinians.

Writing history and teaching both carry responsibilities that go
beyond emotional identification. If that’s the broader context in which
school students will be learning about the “Expulsion of Jews from
Egypt,” so be it. But if you teach it in a way that isolates the Jewish
case from its general context, and again show them that in every
generation some rise up to consume us and the Holy One in Zion is the
one who saves us, don’t bother. Let’s leave matters with the pogroms in
Odessa and Kishinev, or just move on to the next tragedy.

My comment: It is casuistry to say that only 25, 000 Egyptian Jews were actually expelled out of 80,000. Throughout the 1960s, Egyptian Jews were given no choice: if they left the country, they could not return. The fact that a tiny community remained does not negate 'constructive dismissal'. (Several thousand Algerian and Iraqi Jews also remained after the mass Jewish exodus). While there was generalised xenophobia in Egypt, it is not correct to say that other communities, not just Jews, were expelled. Those of Italian and Greek nationality were not expelled after Suez; only if they were Jews were they issued with laissez-passers stamped 'One way - no return'. And Egypt failed to honour its obligations to its native minorities when thousands of stateless and Egyptian Jews were also driven out. Naturally, though, non-Jewish Greeks, Italians, Armenians and Lebanese also felt unwanted and left. It is not correct to say that Jews outside Egypt were left unscarred by the expulsion - many died soon afterwards and some never recovered from the shock. While they should never be exaggerated, persecution and pogroms should not define Jews from the Europe of Mendelssohn, of Rosa Luxemburg, Marx and Kafka.

Monday, September 11, 2017

The Economist reports on the Goutte de Lait project to catalogue 20,000 Jewish documents in the basement of a Cairo synagogue. Of its 20 members, only one is a Jew. None knows Hebrew. The initiative is spun as 'outreach', 'preserving Egypt's Jewish heritage' or 'coming to terms' with Egypt's 13 or fewer Jews: what it does, in reality, is complete the last stage in the mass dispossession of Egypt's 80,000 Jews. As such, for Egypt to retain these Jewish documents is no different from Iraq claiming ownership of the 'Iraqi-Jewish archive'. (With thanks: Nelly)

Some members have Jewish fathers who converted to Islam to avoid expulsion under Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s former dictator, an aggressive Arab nationalist. Others married Jews. Most simply want to preserve Egypt’s pluralist past. “We’re reopening a page of history that was deleted from our textbooks,” says Amir Ramsis, who directed a documentary about Jews in Egypt.
There are 12 synagogues left in Cairo. Many are in poor shape. The group is based in one of them, called Sha’ar Hashamayim (Gate of Heaven), and it plans to turn others into cultural centres.

Members talk hopefully of a “renaissance”. Twice a week they will gather to learn Hebrew so that they can catalogue the 20,000 books in the basement of Sha’ar Hashamayim. They want to create an exhibition of Egypt’s Jewish history in the synagogue and to protect other sites, such as the Jewish cemetery in Cairo.

Some do not share the group’s enthusiasm. Egypt has fought four wars against Israel. Even Jews who worked alongside Egyptians against British colonialism were branded enemies of the state and expelled. Some of those who remain prefer to keep a low profile. American Jewish groups believe Egypt’s Jewish heritage would be better protected outside the country.

But since the revolution in 2011, Egypt’s leaders have reached out to local Jews. In 2012 a leader of the then-ruling Muslim Brotherhood broke a taboo by calling on those who were expelled to return. In 2015 state television broadcast “The Jewish Quarter”, a soap opera that depicted Jews in a positive light. Last month the antiquities ministry began work on a $6m project to restore the roof of Alexandria’s synagogue.
Some see the moves as an effort to win over Western governments; others say that they are only happening now because there are so few Jews left. But it might also be that after four decades of relative peace with Israel, Egypt is coming to terms with its Jews.

Sunday, September 10, 2017

Bad news regarding the Iraqi-Jewish archive: it is set to return to Iraq a year from now - unless a new agreement is negotiated between Iraq and a 'temporary host institution or government'. (With thanks: Imre, Lily)

A Tik (Torah case) found in the archive and dating back to the 19th or 20th centuries.

NEW YORK (JTA) — The United States will
return to Iraq next year a trove of Iraqi Jewish artifacts that
lawmakers and Jewish groups have lobbied to keep in this country, a
State Department official said.

A four-year extension to keep the Iraqi Jewish Archive in the U.S. is
set to expire in September 2018, as is funding for maintaining and
transporting the items. The materials will then be sent back to Iraq,
spokesman Pablo Rodriguez said in a statement sent to JTA on Thursday.

Rodriguez said the State Department “is keenly aware of the interest in the status” of the archive.

“Maintaining the archive outside of Iraq is possible,” he said, “but
would require a new agreement between the Government of Iraq and a
temporary host institution or government.”

The archive was brought to America in 2003 after being salvaged by
U.S. troops. It contains tens of thousands of items including books,
religious texts, photographs and personal documents. Under an agreement
with the government of Iraq, the archive was to be sent back there, but
in 2014 the Iraqi ambassador to the U.S. said its stay had been extended. He did not say when the archive was to return.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers and Jewish groups have lobbied to
renegotiate the deal, arguing that the documents should be kept in the
U.S. or elsewhere where they are accessible to Iraqi Jews and their
descendants. JTA reached out to lawmakers who have sponsored resolutions
urging a renegotiation of the archive’s return but did not hear back in
time for publication.

Iraq and proponents of returning the archive say it can serve as an
educational tool for Iraqis about the history of Jews there and that it
is part of the country’s patrimony.

Friday, September 08, 2017

The announcement that the Egyptian government will be funding the repair of the nineteenth century Eliyahu Hanavi (Nebi Daniel) synagogue in Alexandria has elicited a rare piece in the Guardian, a newspaper not noted for its coverage of the plight of Jewish communities in Arab lands. The writer, Ruth Davidson is to be commended for putting the issue in the context of Egypt's discriminatory treatment of all minorities. See my comment below: (With thanks: Nelly, Alec, Adam and Stan)

A synagogue has stood on the Nebi Daniel site in Alexandria since antiquity

“This is a great project for all Egyptians,” said one engineer, who
declined to give his name. “The project should last an entire year.
We’ll be restoring the entire building,” said another, identified only
as Mohammed.

Yet this handful of engineers was the largest group of visitors the
neglected synagogue has seen in some time. The move to restore the
building, as well as other Jewish sites in Alexandria, comes after
months of pressure from Jewish exiles around the world, fearful that the
city’s diverse past would otherwise be erased.

Alec Nacamuli, a member of the Nebi Daniel Association campaigning to
protect Egypt’s Jewish heritage, welcomed the move, adding that the
organisation has been “more aggressively” pushing for the restoration of
Eliyahu Hanavi since the ceiling collapsed because of water damage.

Nacamuli, whose grandfather was the president of Cairo’s Jewish
community, is now exiled in London from his native Alexandria. “There
have been some frustrations,” he said of the efforts to get the Egyptian
authorities to heed the needs of Egypt’s Jewish diaspora.

Egypt
has a poor track record of protecting its religious minorities and
their houses of worship, notably the country’s largest religious
minority of Coptic Christians, who make up an estimated 10% of the
population.
Security around Alexandria’s synagogue is so tight partly because of
fears after a recent spate of Isis assaults on Coptic Christian
churches.

A
long-awaited law in 2016 clarified the rules around church building and
provided some aid to the beleaguered Christian minority, although
observers such as Human Rights Watch argued
that the state has done little to protect Christian citizens from
violent attacks. In a country where religion is marked on each citizens’
identity card, Egypt’s Shia and Bahai minorities also face daily
persecution and are prevented from building places of worship.

But Egypt’s Jewish past is more fraught with geopolitical sensitivity
than other minorities. Once a community of almost 80,000, numbers began
to dwindle after the creation of Israel in 1948 sparked conflict
between Egypt and its new neighbour.

This resulted in increasing pressure on Egypt’s Jewish citizens,
including incarceration. About 25,000 Jews were formerly expelled in
1956, after being presented with a one-way travel document to leave and a
demand to cede their property to the government. The number of Jews in
Egypt is commonly estimated to be fewer than 50.

Covert efforts to upgrade the country’s synagogues in 2009 were met with widespread reports in the international press that the true motive was Egypt’s push for then-culture minister, Farouk Hosny, to lead Unesco.

Egypt is once again running to head the United Nations’ cultural and
heritage body after nominating former politician and ambassador Moushira
Khattab in 2016. But it insists there is no ulterior motive for the
restoration.

My comment: the article fails to point out
that the legal responsibility for repairing and maintaining Jewish
houses of worship falls on the community in question. However,
there are so few Jews in Egypt (fewer than 13, not 50 as stated in the
article) that it is absurd to expect the tiny community to bear the burden. Moreover, the Egyptian government has made a virtue of
necessity, given that the Jewish community head, Magda Haroun, an
anti-Zionist, has opposed accepting
foreign funding on the grounds that most Jewish associations abroad
interested in making donations are groups supportive of
Israel. The article suspects the underlying motive for Egyptian funding
is to bolster the candidacy of the former politician and ambassador Moushira
Khattab
to be head the United Nations’ cultural and
heritage body. There are two other motives: the restoration of the
grandiose Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue will boost tourism (the Ben Ezra
synagogue in Cairo is already a popular attraction) ; state funding will
legitimise Jewish sites as state property. Already, movable heritage,
such as communal records and Torah scrolls, have been declared to be Egypt's
patrimony, frustrating the long-running campaign by the Nebi Daniel Association to ensure their accessibility to diaspora Jews.

Thursday, September 07, 2017

The eviction of the Arab Shamasneh family from a Jerusalem house in the Shimon Hatzaddik neighbourhood has been all over the press (See here,here and here). The Israelis are being painted as heartless creatures who are throwing elderly Arabs out on the street. But the judgement of the court only went against the Arab tenants when they ceased to pay rent. Another falsehood being spread by the press is that while Jews can reclaim their property, no such law exists enabling Palestinians to reclaim theirs. Not only have there been cases of Palestinians being compensated, but it is impossible for Jews to receive compensation for property they owned in Arab countries.

Arutz Sheva reports:
Sixty-nine years ago, the Hubara family, a Jewish family living in
the heart of Jerusalem, was expelled from their home in the Shimon
Hatzaddik neighborhood by British and Arab forces as the Jordanian army
invaded and occupied the city during the early stages of Israel’s War of
Independence.
The homes in the neighborhood had been purchased by the Sephardic and Ashkenazic communities in 1876.

Called ‘Sheikh Jarrah’ by the city’s Arab population, Shimon
Hatzaddik was emptied of its Jewish population, who became refugees
before any Palestinian Arabs did, and whose homes were then seized by
local Arabs.

When Israel liberated Shimon Hatzaddik in 1967, the Hubara family
found their home was occupied, like so many other Jewish-owned
properties in eastern Jerusalem.

For the next 38 years, the Hubara family’s home in Shimon Hatzaddik
remained in Arab hands, with the family unwilling to endure the lengthy
legal battles required to redeem the property.

In February 2005, tragedy struck. Shimon and Dalia Hubara’s
26-year-old daughter, Odelia, was murdered near a Tel Aviv beachfront in
a suicide bombing attack carried out by the Islamic Jihad terror group.

Following their daughter’s tragic death, the Hubaras decided to take
back what is rightfully theirs, turning to the Israel Land Fund for
assistance.

Twelve years later, following a court order against the Arab
squatters for their refusal to pay rent or repair damage they had caused
to the property, police returned the Hubara home to its legal owners.

But the Hubara family had sold on the property to Arie King of the Israel Land Fund over 10 years earlier, according to Haaretz. Dalia Hubara denies that revenge for the tragic death of her daughter Odelia had prompted the Hubaras to be plaintiffs in the legal case to recover their house:

Dalia Hubara says she feels very bad about Tuesday’s eviction of the Shamasneh family from their home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem. Hubara, one of the heirs to the house, told Haaretz she “does not like to see people removed from their homes, not Jews and not Arabs.”

Hubara inherited the building, a rather small house in the neighborhood, named in Hebrew Shimon Hatzadik, from her mother, who lived there until 1948. Over 10 years ago the family, who inherited the property, sold their rights to right-wing activist Aryeh King, today a member of the Jerusalem city council. They had wanted to sell the house to a Palestinian family before that, but the Palestinians could not raise the money needed, said Hubara.

“King and his friends got in touch with us and we thought it would be good to be rid of the property and sell it, she said. “I considered selling it to the people living there, my husband was in contact with them. We wanted to do it so what happened [Tuesday] would not happen. But they couldn’t manage to buy the house,” said Hubara. (...)

King said, “I’m not very happy that they threw them out on the street either. But they brought it on themselves. The original eviction date was in March 2015. But the woman who lived there was supposed to give birth and they asked for another three months. I told them take half a year and leave whenever you want in the next half year, but they continued to neglect and ignore it.

“Even in the last few weeks,” King continued, “we offered them another period until the father passes away, but I said I don’t trust them anymore because they have a debt of 180,000 shekels [about $50,000] for rent, and damage of another 160,000 shekels.” King says he told them if they provide a check from a guarantor he could trust, he would consider letting them stay longer, but they refused. It’s unpleasant, he said, but “they did everything possible so [the eviction] would happen.”

The elderly parents have no reason whatsoever to remain in the street because their daughter lives right next door, and there is evidence they will receive housing aid from the European Union, said King.

Wednesday, September 06, 2017

It was to counter a book, State of Terror by Thomas Suarez, a collection of distortions and calumnies aiming to blame Zionism for antisemitism, that two UK researchers, David Collier and Jonathan Hoffman, have produced a 22-000 word report called 'Hate and Errors'. They spent weeks at the National Archives at Kew checking original sources. Chapter 9 deals with Suarez's lies about the exodus of the Jews of Iraq. Point of No Return reproduces the relevant extract:

Suarez’s description of the flight of Jews from Iraq (page 282) is downright
dishonest, there is no other word for it[1]:
‘Until its ethnic cleansing of 300,000
more Palestinians in 1967, Israel’s most precipitous post-1948 ethnic cleansing
was of Jews from North Africa and the Middle East’

Thus victim is turned into perpetrator!

He writes that Israel destroyed the Iraqi Jewish community and blocked other
countries from helping Jews who wanted to leave Iraq. And he says that the
anti-Jewish violence in Iraq was a ‘false flag’ operation.This is a pure fabrication.[2]Iraq destroyed the Iraqi
Jewish Community. It began with the Farhud in 1941. The Farhud was the
Holocaust-era massacre by Arab nationalists in coordination with the Nazis,
which occurred on June 1-2, 1941 in Baghdad, killing hundreds of innocent Jews
and brutalising thousands more, and pillaging their property.The Farhud was a major step in the process
which resulted in the forced exodus of 850,000 to 900,000 Jewish refugees from
centuries of peaceful existence in Arab countries.Two Arabs have gone
on record to explain the Farhud[3]
(Saudi journalist Turki al-Dakhil and Iraqi scholar
Rashid al-Khayoun,1 February 2014). The Jewish Senator Ezra Menahem Daniel[4]appealed
after the Farhud against the discriminatory practices introduced in 1948-9.
Jews could not work, attend university or travel. Jews were arrested on the
slightest pretext. Money was extorted from them to pay for war in
Palestine. In March 1950, Jews were given permission to able to leave but were
stripped of their nationality. In 1951 the property of departing Jews was
frozen by law.

When Suarez does mention the Farhud, he goes to extreme lengths not to report
it as an act of antisemitic violence. In fact, he absurdly implies it was the
British, adducing a 12-year-old (at the time) anti-Zionist Jew (Naeim Giladi)
in his support (page 71). This type of rewriting
of history highlights how desperate Suarez is to create a one-sided fictional
tale that condemns the Jewish Zionists at every juncture and absolves everyone
else of everything, including violent massacres of Jews.
Another example of
distortion comes at the bottom of page 28, where Suarez suggests that Hanna
Braun was ‘a Hagana member, involved with
bringing them (Iraqi Jews) to Israel.’
He cites page 82 and
83 of her book (op cit; cited in endnote
#26, page 343). Yet on those pages Braun merely describes her new military
role, which was to teach new immigrants
in Eilat. It is typical of the way Suarez distorts, that he has described a
language teacher in such a way that we are left to believe she is some type of
spy with inside knowledge. As a side note, it is absurd he would describe Braun
as a ‘Hagana member’ over activity she conducted as part of the IDF in 1952.
Hanna Braun’s book describes
her personal struggles, and she clearly suffered from some deep-rooted
psychological battles.At times, it is a
depressing read. A reliable source though - she is not. On page 46, Braun says
this:
‘From our balcony in Acre at the other end of the
bay and on other clear days, the mountains of Lebanon covered with a layer of
snow all year round’.
"Snow, in Lebanon in summer? Visible from Akko? No
further comment ……….

When relying
on Braun’s input, and the difficulties some of these new Jewish refugees faced in
Israel Suarez also writes (page 29)

‘a punitive exit tax and loss of original
citizenship kept many from returning home once the deceit was exposed’

That sentence
contains several distortions:

1.Israel accepted more than its own population in refugees in the first
three or four years of the State.[5]
It is proportional to the United Kingdom absorbing 70,000,000 (seventy million)
refugees in the next forty months. It is impossible to overstate the strain
such an influx imposes upon every facet of society. Nor how it might damage the
economy, nor how difficult the absorption process is. No doubt there were refugees
who did not settle in Israel. There are entire departments in rich Western
nations devoted to assisting the first difficult years of a refugee. It is sickening that Suarez abuses such
issues, piggybacking on the suffering of others, to attack Israel. These
refugees are often used as weapons by anti-Israel revisionists. It highlights the
hypocrisy of self-declared ‘humanitarians’, refusing to allow ‘periods of
adjustment’ only when they are focusing
on Jewish victims.[6]

2.The denial of citizenship was not an Israeli measure, but rather that of
the Arab states who evicted and expelled their Jews. Additionally, Israel
permits dual citizenship, so Suarez is blaming Israel for the illiberal and punitive
measures of Arab states.

3.The ‘exit tax’, was an economic measure in existence in Israel until the
early 1990’s. In the first years of the State, as Israel experienced a major
economic crisis (due to conflict and absorbing more than one immigrant per
citizen), it also suffered a severe shortage of foreign currency. It set high
exit taxes (many nations have some exit or travel tax – leaving Heathrow on a
flight to New York can currently cost over £75).[7]
Further, in a complete rejection of what Suarez is arguing, ‘permits were relatively easily granted to
new immigrants who did not acclimatize well to life in Israel and requested to
leave the country permanently’.[8]
To describe it as some type of ‘penalty tax’ -created to dissuade potential
emigrants based on their nation of origin - is ludicrous.

Each sentence
in the book can be dissected in this fashion: A pile of distortions, incidents
removed from context and fictions, all shaped together to demonise Israel.

Returning
from this slight digression to the Iraq section, Suarez accessed C0
733/275/4 but failed to mention that it describes anti-Jewish agitations against
Iraqi Jews in 1929 and 1933 (letter from Sir F Humphreys to Sir John Simon, 13 December
1934).

File FO 371/27861 (not accessed by Suarez) discusses a bomb
outrage against a Jewish club in Baghdad in 1938. A letter in August of 1938
speaks of ‘two cases of bomb throwing at Jewish clubs’. A telegram on
November 28 discusses an attack on a coffee house that seems to have targeted
Jews.

These actions were not occurring in a vacuum. In the mid
1930’s, an Iraqi newspaper (al-Alam al-arabi) published daily extracts from Mein Kampf
in Arabic. Pro-Nazi movements began to appear and anti-Jewish printed material
was handed out by youth groups. This all before the Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini
arrived in Iraq.[9]

FO 371/27099 (not accessed by Suarez) in a telegram on 23February 1941, discusses an attack by Kurds on a Jewish village three
months prior to the Farhud.

It is not true (page 283) that
in 1950, Israel blocked other countries from helping Jews who wanted to leave
Iraq.Near East Air Transport was a
partnership between El Al and Alaskan Airlines, but the airlift was a joint
venture with senior Iraqi Muslim officials (Iraq Tours) and the charter was
negotiated with Iraqi Airways, in which the Iraqi Prime Minister Tawfiq
al-Suweidy had an interest.Edwin Black
confirms[11]
that British Airways and BOAC were also involved.

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Introduction

In just 50 years, almost a million Jews, whose communities stretch back up to 3,000 years, have been 'ethnically cleansed' from 10 Arab countries. These refugees outnumber the Palestinian refugees two to one, but their narrative has all but been ignored. Unlike Palestinian refugees, they fled not war, but systematic persecution. Seen in this light, Israel, where some 50 percent of the Jewish population descend from these refugees and are now full citizens, is the legitimate expression of the self-determination of an oppressed indigenous, Middle Eastern people.This website is dedicated to preserving the memory of the near-extinct Jewish communities, which can never return to what and where they once were - even if they wanted to. It will attempt to pass on the stories of the Jewish refugees and their current struggle for recognition and restitution. Awareness of the injustice done to these Jews can only advance the cause of peace and reconciliation.(Iran: once an ally of Israel, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now an implacable enemy and numbers of Iranian Jews have fallen drastically from 80,000 to 20,000 since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Their plight - and that of all other communities threatened by Islamism - does therefore fall within the scope of this blog.)